Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Not a Monster

In the discussion on the Scientopia post yesterday there was a comment about whether professors worry that having some "failed" (possibly fired) students will affect recruiting of new students. I think the answer to that for many professors is Yes (but leave a comment/explain if you are one of those who does not care).

I know I have written about this before and there are relevant anecdotes deep in the archives, somewhere, so some of this is a re-discussion of this topic. I am going to assume for most of this discussion that the advisor is not evil or otherwise highly dysfunctional (but will get to that near the end of the post). I am also not going to make a distinction between failing and firing; for the purposes of this discussion, it might not even be widely known exactly why a student left.

The impact of failed/fired students can be an issue in recruiting because you can't really explain to potential students exactly what happened with a failed/fired student, especially if there are sensitive issues involved. I know one student (many years ago, not at my current institution) who had to leave a grad program owing to a cheating incident. I don't know what that advisor told prospective students, if anything, and I don't know how open the departing student was with fellow students about the reason for having to leave, but as an advisor, I would be very reluctant to explain such a situation to a prospective student. And yet, it wouldn't be fair to the advisor, who had only a few advisees at a time, if such an incident had a negative effect on their ability to recruit new students.

I have also mentioned before that I have advised or otherwise worked with students with major substance abuse problems (that pre-dated their working with me, in case you are wondering). Some of these students eventually finished their degrees, but at least one (the most severe case) did not. He told people that I had "fired" him, but in fact he was forced by his parents to try rehab (again). Mostly it was a human tragedy for that particular student, of course, but it was also a low point for me as an advisor.

There was another interesting comment on the Scientopia post yesterday: a description of a student's point of view and a professor's point of view, as told by a third person who had talked to both about a certain difficult advisor-student situation. Based on what I read, I would say that both sides are "right"; in some cases, personalities and priorities just don't mesh between student and advisor.

So, even if a student has run-of-the-mill problems with grad school (nothing involving cheating or drug addiction..), there are still complex issues and different points of view. A student could complain "My advisor never checks on me to find out what I am doing and see if I need help ", and the advisor could complain "My student never comes to see me to show me what s/he has done recently and ask questions." Of course both should be talking to each other, but if that doesn't happen and the student flounders to the point of failing, should prospective students be cautioned about the advisor (uncaring, lets students sink then fails them) or just told about their advising style (works best with students who take some initiative and don't mind being a bit independent)?

The advisor can also tell prospective students about their advising style. I have been having this conversation more and more with prospective students in recent years. In fact, some ask me directly: do you have an open-door policy or do you prefer to have scheduled meetings with students etc.? I think these conversations are very useful, and can be a way for the advisor to signal in advance what won't work (implying past problems without discussing individuals).

Here is my hypothesis o' the day, for discussion:

I think that if the advisor is overall a reasonably good, well-meaning advisor and just has the occasional advising disaster (for whatever reason), there won't be a major (long term) negative effect on their ability to maintain a good group of successful advisees. This may be more true for senior professors with a track record of advising success, and more of an issue for early-career professors.

But this is the part that I am less sure about: the case of not-good, perhaps even evil advisors. I have seen some dysfunctional advisors lose their grad program entirely, but I know of others (mostly via e-mail from readers) who somehow keep getting students. I think the difference might involve the overall success and funding record of the advisor: if you have money, you can have students (??). In those cases, I would think that word-of-mouth cautions from former and existing students would nevertheless make recruiting new students difficult, and that this would be a way to try to force a change for the better, but I don't know of any cases in which this was tried and worked (do you?).

19 comments:

Anonymous
said...

The secrecy issue is a complicated one that goes beyond grad students. A former colleague did some very bad things, and all of the people "in the know" were sworn to secrecy. The rest of us didn't know and some people did some professional favors for him, not realizing who they were dealing with. Even some of the people who knew part of it didn't know the full story, so there was a time when he was still here and there were people who were failing to act with proper precautions or advise trainees to stay clear.

Of course, the guy who did bad things took no vow of secrecy, so he was free to spread his story and manipulate people, while those who knew said nothing. It took several months to repair all of the damage and root out all of the people who had been kept in the dark despite a Need To Know.

Secrecy goes both ways. I had a grad student ("X") who plagiarized. He had to leave the grad program as a result but asked that I not tell the other students why he was leaving. I agreed but then students kept asking me why I had "fired X". They said that "X" had told them that I fired him, without any warning. I kept having to say that I didn't fire him, that he left for "other" reasons. Even if I hadn't promised I wouldn't talk about his plagiarism, I wouldn't have done it anyway because I don't think that would be right, but it did seem unfair that I was the one seen in a negative light.

I've never seen this to be a problem considering that practically no one ever graduates with their PhD anyway (http://www.phdcompletion.org/quantitative/book1_quant.asp).

Since I started with an NSF Fellowship, I didn't realize how little money my professor had for research until I had to pay for chemicals out of my stipend money. After 3 years, my project was no longer interesting enough for him, but I was welcome to start a new 5-year project, with only the first year of funding available! This was at a US top-20 program.

Now failing my 3rd PhD in Germany. I have 3 publications, 3 more submitted, have written 3 theses. If I were just more assertive, less aggressive, asked more questions, annoyed my professor less, then I would have my PhD, I'm told. As soon as I correct "underlying assumption on which my entire work is based," my professor will accept my thesis. With attrition rates well above 50% (compare entering vs. granted Ph.D.s), I would say it's a systemic problem and only marginally related to personalities. A large problem is the ease of obtaining funding for new PhDs (for up to 2 years) but paucity of funding for continuing projects. If a PhD should take 5 years, funding should be issued on a more long term basis.

I think the word-of-mouth theroy only applies, if most of the PhD students have already done their undergrad studies at the same uni or had the chance to visit the faculty before they decided to start their PhD there. If students are coming from abroad, they often meet their new advisor for the first time after they already have moved a few thousand kilometers. So they mostly can't find out beforehand and then the statement "if you have money, you can have students" plays a much bigger role.

This can also be a big problem in choosing a post doctoral position. It is very difficult to figure out the success rate (be it publications, faculty positions etc.) or former postdocs In a lab as most are only around for two to three years. A failed postdoc who left with no publications will not show up anywhere in a lab's record and most postdoc applicants have little time on campus to question current lab members.

I don't know why international and other students don't email current and recent students from a research group to find out what the advisor is like, general climate of the program and so on. I know from talking to my students (past and present) that some applicants do this, and I think it is a good thing.

The problem is that there is this huge asymmetry in power between advisor and advisee. As a student, you are completely dependent on the goodwill of your advisor. Switching advisors comes at a tremendous cost -- years of work down the drain. Or you might not be able to find another professor willing to support you. There is no going above your boss's head, no transferring to a different division. Your livelihood and future career are completely at the mercy of a single person, who may or may not be responsible, who may or may not like you. I was never so relieved as the day I finally got my PhD, with a job lined up in the real job market, where you can quit if things get too bad and find another job without flushing six years down the toilet.

Is it hard for advisors to recruit students if there are rumors of bad ends for their previous students? If so, good. I never heard that kind of rumor until I was already employed... Perhaps this is sometimes unjust for the advisor, but the consequences for a student who picks the wrong advisor are so much greater than the consequences for an advisor who cannot recruit the best students, that with our current system, it would be hard to err too much on the side of the student.

The best solution for all of these problems would be more oversight. If students worked, not for the advisors directly, but for the graduate school, who could actually re-assign them to a different advisor if the relationship were sour, the stakes would be lower for everyone. Of course this would mean graduate schools interfering with the budgets for research project, very unfair in the current system where professors have to work so hard to get those grants in the first place. But I think that is ridiculous too. Why should professors have to be, effectively, small-business owners? Why can't the university act like a larger business? Why can't grants go directly to the university, who can budget time and people as appropriate. Professors might be judged pn their ability to write and win proposals, but also be able to work on each other's projects. I know this model can work because it's the way my corporate R&D lab works...

Maybe because there are more students than professors writing blogs and blog comments but you could easily get a skewed view, thinking that the major problem is bad advisors. From what I have seen from both sides, it is far more common that a student will fail or be fired because the student really wasn't doing well, owing to no fault of the advisor. I am not saying that there aren't bad advisors out there, but many advisors give their students a lot of help and chances, but it just doesn't work out. It is crazy and unfair to think that in MOST of these cases that the advisor could have or should have done more.

My evil ex- adviser had trouble getting students for a little while. He has quite a reputation in his department but his research is multi- disciplinary so that's how I didn't hear about him. Also, even current students of his weren't exactly straight with me. They would say things like "he has high expectations for his students". I thought, great, I have high expectations for myself also. But I think that was code for unrealistic and unhealthy expectations...

There were a few 'evil' professors at my Top 5 graduate school. In response to the last comment about word-of-mouth taking a toll on group recruitment for these professors, I saw, repeatedly, that the answer is no. Even when directly told of known gender inequity and unrealistic expectations, the 'cream of the crop' students admitted to the school just KNEW that the same type of treatment wouldn't happen to THEM.

Also, if most students are international, there are other pressures. I was good, but I did not graduate from a well-known school, and had only two offers to choose from. For me, entering that PhD was a way to use my talents which would otherwise go to waste in my home country. I was interested in research etc., but the need to get out and get to a place where I can make something out of myself was a very big factor. I was lucky to have a good adviser. I don't know if I would have listened if someone warned me about a bad one, though. For an international student, if you are not a top student with a gazillion of options, chances are you will grab the opportunity and think they can manage it, especially if they don't get good advice from their undergraduate institution. I think there were a lot of people like me in my program (which was good, but not the top 10). So an evil adviser may well still have their pick from people who have aspirations but don't know what to look out for.

I think all bets are off once you get to mediocre institutions. Potential students are less likely to do their home work on their advisors, more likely to be desperate to get in somewhere. And students are more likely to be supported by TAs, so advisors who lack funding still get graduate students, especially if they work on a "popular" subject. And let's face it. There are a lot of mediocre graduate programs out there.

I had an evil advisor I was not warned about--his first students were finishing when I joined the lab. I stayed in the lab, and as a senior student, warned others away. Current post-docs would warn potential post-docs away. But new students and post-docs would still come, because they all thought it would be different for them (they were smarter, harder working, etc.). What they didn't understand was that it didn't matter--HE WAS THE PROBLEM!

Hah! Stephanie's comment at 11:00 AM makes me wonder how many times current students and postdocs TRY to warn others using such code language but the new students don't understand the code and don't catch on. I'll be that this happens a lot.

When I started grad school, I had the misfortune to get stuck with an infamous advisor, for reasons beyond my control. I knew within the first two months that both our personalities and research interests were incompatible. While quick, this realization didn't come as quickly as that of a recently-hired postdoc, who left within 3 weeks of joining the lab. I later found out that in his 30 year career, my then-advisor had recruited 30 students, of which 3 had received their Ph.D.s.

Because my research interests changed, I reapplied to other programs, and vetted potential advisors extremely carefully--so much so that I was dead set on one person. Unfortunately, for reasons beyond his control (funding-related), this person wasn't able to take me on as his advisee. And because I was still shell-shocked from the awful advising experience, I wasn't willing to take the chance to move across the country into another lab that I wasn't sure about. So, I decided to stay in the same program, despite that I didn't exactly feel comfortable there, due to the baggage with my former advisor and that nobody else seemed like a good fit for an advisor at the time.

The next year and a half was uncomfortable for me, due to these reasons and my stupid decision to open my mouth about my wish to get out of the program. For the next year, I collaborated with the professor whose lab I'd wanted to join, under the puppet advisorship of a professor at my program who knew him well. During this time, the head of my area of the dept. threatened to throw me out of the program if I couldn't find a real advisor, even though he had no power to do so (though I didn't know this at the time.) Scared stiff, I approached several professors with thesis plans specially tailored to their interests, but was rejected by one after another, mostly on the grounds of being "difficult to work with." Desperate, I finally approached an older professor who was no longer accepting students and begged him to supervise my thesis. Fortunately, he assented, and I'm finishing my thesis under his supervision now.

My points in telling this sob story are as follows: (1) Students with dysfunctional advisors, take heart. Usually, you can work out some arrangement to finish your Ph.D., even if it's not the most comfortable, if you want it badly enough. (2) Students, vet your advisors carefully. When shopping around, I definitely emailed students from other lab groups to get their opinion on their advisor. (3) Advisors, please be kind to your students. I understand that not all students are cut out for research, but if most of your students are leaving/being fired, it may be time to look inward.

P.S. My dysfunctional first year advisor decided to retire early after I left his lab, so it seems that, despite all of the damage that he did over his career, the students had the last laugh.

I know of one professor in my field who fired his entire lab group at one go. I would have thought it would be a problem, but I guess he was well enough established. You can see the gap (~5 yrs with no Ph.D.'s, when before and after it's more like 1 every 1-2 years) in the list of Ph.D.'s out of his lab, and at least some current students at his university know about it, but he seems to still be getting students. I'd be worried about working for someone that volatile.

One issue is that since the current members of the group are stuck, they may not be able to tell prospective students for fear of retribution. Been there.

Second, in the US at least, grants DO go through one's university. The one thing that does impact, however, is the loss of years of work. All data belong to the university, NOT the PI. Your department, with the help of the university can step in and help you finish (been there too). Doesn't help. Even if students are not funded by their advisors which is the norm in some fields, the exact same problems exist.

The odd thing about the secrecy approach is people find out anyway. Or, at least, that's how it worked in my old department. We had a couple people vaporize for plagiarism and a couple others for, well, sucking. The labs these people were fired from did not have further trouble recruiting students.

In my current department there are a couple notoriously abusive and manipulative advisors who people are warned against. Yet students join their labs anyway. I'm not sure if it's because they like the projects offered, the potential for the person's name on their resumes, or they just naively believe that All That Stuff just won't happen to them.

About Me

I am a full professor in a physical sciences field at a large research university. I am married and have a teenaged daughter.
I have the greatest job in the world, but this will not stop me from noting some of the more puzzling and stressful aspects of my career as a science professor.
E-mail (can't promise to reply): femalescienceprofessor@gmail.com